


To Wander on a Darkened Earth

by herbaceous_boarder



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-01
Updated: 2015-07-01
Packaged: 2018-04-07 05:38:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4251435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/herbaceous_boarder/pseuds/herbaceous_boarder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She lies to me as well as she can but she’s not even bothering very hard anymore. I know she is trying to die. And I know she can. By doing nothing at all. Because if she doesn’t fight, this illness, her own body, will eat away her cells from the inside out. And she has no reason to fight, now. ‘Cause Delphine fought everything, gave everything, lied to everyone for her. And now she’s going to do the same, in some deluded, desperate hope of an afterlife with Her. - Shay's point of view. Living with Cosima as she fails to recover from Delphine's death. Post Season 3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Wander on a Darkened Earth

**A/N: So this is a weird oneshot I wrote to work the finale feels out of my system a bit. Title is taken from Tennyson’s _In Memoriam_ (well worth a read), from the lines “But I remained, whose hopes were dim, / Whose life, whose thoughts were little worth, / To wander on a darkened earth, / Where all things round me breathed of him”. This fic obviously assumes that Delphine dies, and is written from Shay’s point of view.**

 

 

I will be brave, be brave.

I’ll dig my own grave

And lie down.

Make me your own.

 

 _\- Betrothal,_ Carol Ann Duffy

 

I flip the pancakes with painstaking panache and hopefully glance behind me for a cheeky compliment or insult to my self-proclaimed genius for cuisine.

Of course, I am not so rewarded.

Instead, Cosima stares blankly at the pages on the table in front of her - pages I know for a fact have been open in exactly the same way for two consecutive days despite the fact she has ostensibly been “reading” them for at least eight of those hours. I mean, could she be any more obvious? Most of those pages are taken up by the goddamn graphs.

I crack the joke for her, as I have so many times the past couple of weeks. “That was flipped with particular elegance and grace upon this occasion, if I do say so myself”.

Cosima looks up with as much surprise as her utterly dead eyes seem able to muster and I know that once more she has forgotten where she is. And who she is with. She seems to forcibly rouse herself into some semblance of life and gives me a thin, ailing parody of the smiles she used to give me. But more to the point, I guess, of the smiles she used to give _Her_. “Sure, sure, you’re a –uh- regular Martha Stewart”, she attempts and I laugh, too loud, far too loud, so that she is alarmed into silence once more, made uneasy by my apparently maniacal outburst.

The kitchen falls silent once more so I hear the slight tearing sound my feet make lifting from the sticky lino floor as I pad around the preparation area.

Cosima drags her dry eyes back down to that fucking paper and I want to scream.

Determined to keep it together, I turn on the old radio I’ve been forced to dig out for these achingly withered dawn breakfasts and turn it on as gradually as I can, so as to avoid the sudden shattering of the quiet.

This pancake is probably ready.

I decide to leave it. Let it burn. It’ll give us something to joke about.

Fuck, it’s an age away from that first morning when I delighted in making the perfect chocolate chip pancakes and presenting them all drizzled in maple syrup and strawberries like a fucking recipe book picture.

But I’d never be able to surprise her with breakfast in bed now. She’d never sleep through me getting up. Fuck, she’d probably never go to sleep in the first place. She never seems to, these days. Her breath never deepens, the long complained about drool never comes, though, god, now how I wish it would.

Just eight hours of staring through the pit of her own pupils at darkness instead of light. I doubt she really notices the difference, to be perfectly and painfully honest.

She is utterly unrecognisable from the girl I met at the bar who was all languorous charm and smiles that made you feel she was Edison inventing the first goddamn lightbulb all over again. She doesn’t move right, doesn’t sit right. It’s like she crawled into herself and _died_ in there, tucked away in some deep corner of her cancerous organs. Yesterday, when I came home there was a full, horrifying and yet oh-so-horrifyingly-relieved thirty seconds when I thought she was actually dead before a cough racked through her body, convulsing her and proving her still alive, if still dying.

Which is the worst I think. She lies to me as well as she can but she’s not even bothering very hard anymore. I know she is trying to die. And I know she can. By doing nothing at all. Because if she doesn’t fight, this illness, her own body, will eat away her cells from the inside out. And she has no reason to fight, now. ‘Cause Delphine fought everything, gave everything, lied to everyone for her. And now she’s going to do the same, in some deluded, desperate hope of an afterlife with Her. And to top it all, even she knows it’s all bullshit. I think she just feels so fucking guilty, all the fucking time - for having put her sisters over Delphine, for making Delphine die for her and not even trusting her enough to bring her into her plans - that now she’s proving her trust and willingness to die the only way left.

I think she spends so many hours a day now picturing herself a corpse for Delphine that she nearly is one.

And why? Fucking why? Because she loved Her. I knew she wasn’t over her ex, obviously, but then some psycho blonde is in my apartment threatening to kill me and you know what, I began to have reservations. What is there to love? She was a power-obsessed, sadistic, controlling, evil bitch with a French accent as far as I can see. And they tell me it wasn’t like that, the other “clones”, who can bear to say _Her_ name out loud. Who explain it to me as best they can in hushed voices whilst Cosima pees, though God knows what, she barely consumes anything, liquids or solids, these days. They tell me She always had Cosima’s best interests at heart - that She did what she had to.

Turns out that what She had to do was die. And turns out what She had to do right before that is make both me and Cosima for ever indebted to _Her_ , controlling our relationship even beyond her fucking grave.

And I can’t even get mad at Her because the woman gave up her life for Cosima for fuck’s sake. She was noble and selfless and I fucking hate Her for it.

‘Cause now She’s left me to be the same. Given me the charge and the duty, an obligation to a dead woman’s final requests binding me to this girl in my kitchen, a girl I don’t know. Not really. A girl who had a mad, passionate love affair with some crazy bitch who tried to torture me. A girl who that crazy bitch has forced me to love for _Her_ sake, not for mine. To care for this girl in _Her_ place, not in mine. To worry about this girl on _Her_ behalf, to protect this girl as the benefactor of _Her_ sacrifice.

In two meetings that woman has determined my life. I am stuck in the shoes of the most tragically heroic lesbian that has ever existed and all I can do is make fucking pancakes and dance as if Cosima is comforted by me, is affected by me, cares in the least about _my_ existence now that  _She_ is gone.

I have been made the life-support machine and I wonder if, after everything else She sacrificed for Cosima, Delphine knew she was sacrificing me too. Keeping Cosima alive by funnelling every last drop of Her efforts and mine through me.

Because slowly, I am being drained, and the only pathetic, scant comfort is that I think it is enough, just, to stabilise my almost-comatose old lover. It is going to kill me to keep her going, but keep going she will. Eventually she may even resurrect herself, Lady Lazarus that she is.

And I’ll just be the girl she chewed up to recover from the death of her ex. I’ll be absolutely nothing but an obligatory footnote to the soaring chapter of her life that she’ll title ‘Delphine’.

I will be wholly subsumed and submerged by this magnitudinous love which I never witnessed and only reluctantly believe in. I’d call it Stockholm Syndrome but we’re past joking now.

It was heart-stopping, asphyxiating, at-first-sight, total adoration between two people.

And it may kill all three of us.


End file.
